The chapter begins with antecedents. These include those of the German philological tradition, then Max M� Ratzel, and others, before the British twentieth-century diffusionists, Elliot Smith and Perry. After this came the culture-area theorists, including Wissler, and then the regional approaches of ‘Dutch structuralism’. The chapter highlights the complexity of these schools and ends with a consideration of three types of comparison: illustrative, global-sample, and controlled.